Tesco has released a limited edition “birthday cake sandwich”. It’s made with cream cheese and strawberry jam and can be found among the savoury sarnies. It is classified as a meal deal main, despite quite clearly being pudding.
The release follows the viral strawberry and creme sando released by Marks & Spencer in June. It’s as simple an offering and one obviously designed in a similar vein: to cause a stir. Just as we tried M&S’ sando, we tried this one. Has Tesco got it right?
David’s take
Far be it from me to say that Tesco falls decidedly below M&S on the supermarket scale, but come the f*** on. Having seen the viral success of Marks’ strawberry and creme sandwich — a riff on Japanese sandos found in petrol stations and the like across Japan — Tesco has decided to get in on the sweet sandwich game. Only, instead of fresh fruit and like cream, they’ve gone for sweet strawberry jam and cream cheese icing, studded with hundreds and thousands. And they’re calling it “birthday cake sandwich.” This surely is an answer to a request nobody made — except, perhaps, high-ups in the corporate head office, greedy for a little more income and hoping the M&S effect can be repeated. Bizarrely, it is more expensive than the real fruit sarnie, by 20p.
Marks’ sandwich did not entirely win me over, but this truly is the stuff nightmares can be conjured from. It is hideous. Jam sandwiches are one thing, but at least they’re not polluted with artificially sweet brioche. I can’t even recommend it for children; it would likely send them hyper, and it might also put them off birthday cake for life. Birthday cakes are one of childhood’s sincere pleasures and so it would be an act of cruelty to do so. Not a hit, then. And I’d consider an adult tucking into one highly suspect, in a way that I am not legally allowed to embellish upon.
Josh’s take
Tesco following Marks & Spencer into the world of sweet sandwiches was inevitable. It is the simplest form of marketing in the new-age and I’ll begin by acknowledging the impressive speed in which Tesco managed to launch this, a birthday cake sandwich made with full fat cream cheese and strawberry jam (seedless). M&S only released its strawberry and cream sando at the tail-end of June; supermarket development classically takes an age and so hats off in that respect.
I must also concede that this was never likely to win me over. I don’t generally care for cake. I find it claggy and sweet and I’d always rather have a sausage roll. I was the kid whose mum would sigh and watch me sit down and scoop up the unbaked batter with a cracked wooden spoon.
Anyway, this birthday sandwich. Quite good to look at with its colourful sprinkles and sweet-looking bread. Is it brioche? Not decipherably so. To that end, Tesco has cut corners where M&S went in full tilt. Varying budgets I should suppose. And to eat? I hardly need to go on. This is not for me. It tastes like a bad cream tea. But it’s £3 and something to talk about; something to break up the day.
